Hero of the Story
by nodumbbitch
Summary: House and his team have to figure out how to save a young woman with a mysterious disease whose head is already on the chopping block. Has now won an award!
1. Chapter 1

_DISCLAIMER: I don't own House. I don't own any of the characters except those which I create. Also, I know nothing about medical stuff, and I don't claim to, so half of the medical conditions are made up. Also, I do not claim to know any Czech, or anything like that. I do not want to offend anybody with this story. Please don't take any of my writing as offensive._

**Hero of the Story**

"Hey open wide, here comes original sin.  
It's alright, no-one's got it all...  
I'm the hero of the story, I don't need to be saved  
It's alright, no-one's got it all..."  
--regina spektor, "Hero of the Story"

Dr. Gregory House. The door screamed this in large white letters. He was a doctor. What else would he be doing with a hospital in an office if he weren't a doctor? For some reason today, he hated that door. He swilved around in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. It was the same old colour it always was. Everything was exactly the same as it always was. The same colour, the same shade, the same personality, the same story. He wouldn't admit it, but he lusted for something new and interesting. Or maybe he would admit it. He was unpredictable in that way.

A light rap on the door made him glance up. He waved the person on the other side of the door inside, and leaned his head back again to stare out the window and ignore her. "You're supposed to be in the clinic." He just ignored her and tossed a rubber band ball up in the air. It fell past his hands and bounced off the floor.

"A hit and a miss."

"You're supposed to be in the clinic," Cuddy repeated angrily. This time, House looked up at her.

"I'm watching the news," he said plainly, and went back to throwing his ball and catching it again.

"The television isn't even on," Cuddy said indignantly. "Now, why don't you just go down to the clinic before I have to fire your ass." House raised his eyebrow at her and turned on the television. It was a news report about an ongoing trial in New York City. "Or before I have to attempt to assassinate you like I'm Triszika or something." With that she walked out of the office, leaving Dr. Gregory House to stare at the television. The news report was covering the trial, they all were. The Czech government wasn't even trying to keep the trial on the downlow. House looked at the pale features of Nasili Triszika, the young woman on trial. Her dark eyes glowed against the white of her skin and the blackness of her long, curly hair. She looked like an oppressed prison of war, like she was a butterfly trapped in a cage. House bit his lip and clicked the television off.

Standing up, leaning on his same-old cane, he walked down the hall with his same-old limp to the same-old clinic to do his same-old clinic duty. He passed by some rooms that were exactly the same as they always were, he saw all the same exact people that he saw every day. He wished for something new, for someone to practically die from some unknown cause so that he had a real excuse to get out of clinic duty. On his way down the hall, he saw Dr. Cameron, his young, beautiful right hand speaking with his not so young, not so beautiful left hand, Dr. Foreman.

"Well if it isn't a natural diasaster waiting to happen," Foreman said as soon as he saw House. "Off to your clinic duty, I presume. Cuddy found you alright?" House just gave him a look and a sneer as he limped by. House paused and looked back at the two doctors. They were holding a newspaper between them, and it appeared that that had been what they were talking about. "Can I see that paper?" House asked, suddenly intrigued. Cameron shrugged and handed him the paper.

"It's all about Triszika, mostly. It's kind of an interesting trial," Cameron said, as she looked at House going over the front page story. There was that picture of Triszika again, her hair disheveled and yet in perfect condition, her eyes wild, yet calm, her snowy skin pulled taught across those perfect Eastern European cheekbones. It seemed like no matter where a picture was taken of her, she was filled with conflict from the inside out. House sucked on his lip and handed the paper back to Cameron. "She didn't do it," he said plainly before turning around and continuing his limp towards the elevator. Cameron and Foreman followed him.

"What makes you so sure?" Foreman asked, interested, as the elevator doors closed in front of their faces. House just gave him a look, as though saying 'I'm having a crappy day, and I'm psychic, I just know.' This "look" made Foreman not push his question. "I just think the girl is crazy. Some of the things she says are... crazy."

"English isn't even her first language! She can barely speak it. Of course she sounds crazy," Cameron said, jumping in.

"That's not just why I think it. She just isn't right in the head."

"Who of us is?" House asked, looking at Foreman before taking a step out of the elevator onto the landing. Foreman followed him, eyes rolling. Cameron detached and went off in another direction. Foreman wandered up to House, and gave him an odd look.

"You really think she's innocent?"

"There's no way a girl like that could try to assassinate anybody. Look at her medical history."

"How the hell do you know her medical history?" Foreman asked, not really wanted to know. House just tapped his nose and went into the first examination room.

The jury, the reporters, everybody was looking down at her like she was some murderous basketcase. The world felt like it was tipping over, she felt sweat pouring down every inch of her skin. People didn't know how nervous she was... all they cared about was a good story. She heard her name being called to the stands. She felt dizzy, disconnected. She felt like she couldn't stand. Her lawyer helped her up, pulling her arm a little. She shook her head and felt a large glob of sweat pour down from her nose. Her lawyer's eyes widened greatly, and but her eyes were blacking out. She couldn't see... everything was turning red.

People rushed to her fallen body. There was blood coming out of her nose, mouth, ears, and eyes. She was convulsing on the ground, clearly unconscious. "Somebody call an ambulance!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Hero of the Story**

House paused in front of Cuddy's door before knocking. He sighed deeply, disguising his eagerness to get the new assignment. After the knocking part, he heard Cuddy call from inside. "Come in." He entered, and looked around. Cuddy was standing next to her desk, which was in unusual disarray. There was paperwork thrown all over it, and Cuddy herself looked disheveled. She seemed to be searching for something.

"So, what's the case of the week? Probably the same, old, boring stuff of legend?" House asked Cuddy dully as he pushed the door shut behind him. She gave him a look and then sat down at her desk, going through her papers. "Well?" He was slightly confused by the strained look on her face, and the fact that she was biting her lip hard. She didn't even look up at him. "I know you have a case for us. So, out with it already."

"It's Triszika." House was taken aback. He was not expecting this at all. "Nasili Triszika. The assassin."

"I know who Nasili Triszika is." House looked at Cuddy, and she raised her eyebrows at him.

"No witty remark? I'm floored." Cuddy stood up to face House. "All I have to say is that her lawyers are saying that this has to be an unbiased diagnosis. They don't want you or anyone on your team saying that there's nothing amazingly wrong with her when there is. And they don't want any discussion on whether or not she's innocent - to her, to each other, or to the media. This is a very high profile trial, and so this case is high profile. You slip up, they'll be on your throats like..."

"Assassins?" House blurted, cutting Cuddy off.

"Basically, yes." She shoved a small file at him, and he took it. She raised and eyebrow, and went back to trying to clean up her desk a bit. "This is a very important case, Greg." House nodded and walked out ofCuddy's officeto his conference room, where every member of his team was waiting for him. He pushed the door open steadily, and they all looked at him expectantly. He ignored them and went over to the white board. Cameron was sitting in the chair closest to the door, and was putting a newspaper down. Chase was next to her, probably reading over her shoulder. Foreman was somewhat isolated from the other two, drinking a cup of coffee. And as soon as House put his foot over the threshold of the room, they had stopped what they were doing and put all their attention on him.

"So... what've we got?" Foreman asked, breaking the silence.

"Nasili Triszika," House said plainly. "She's had an attack of some kind in the middle of a hearing. It's our job to figure out what happened and get rid of whatever it is before the final testimony, and do this without attracting media attention of any kind." The three team members looked at each other, eyebrows raised, clearly shocked. "I'm serious, too."

"You can't be serious. We have to treat _her_?" Foreman said unbelievably.

"God, sound more like a biased bigot, will you?" Cameron said exhasperatedly to Foreman. Chase was caught in between the two, just looking at House. "We have to treat her like every patient we've ever had, it would be unfair to her and this hospital to do or say anything that has to do with your stance on the trial."

"How about we just figure out what's wrong with her before we keep debating this?" Chase said, inclining his head toward House, who waslooking at the whiteboard.

"Oh, don't stop on my account," House said, turning to his associates. "I'm just trying to figure out how these symptoms connect."

"For once its something he hasn't seen," Foreman said sarcastically. House gave him a look, and then went back to the board, scribbling away. "Probably just a vein rupture in her head. How is that interesting in any way?" Foreman asked, just after seeing House write "Internal bleeding in head."

"The thing being, Foreman, that it isn't that simple."

"Wasn't she bleeding out of essentially every opening in her head?" Chase asked, trying to avoid arguments, which was generally impossible. Everybody paused and looked at him, and he sunk back into his seat. "She... intrigues me. I've been doing as much research as possible." He tried not to blush.

"Well, aside from Chase having a crsuh on our little assassin, you all have to find Waldo," House said. Everybody leaned forward in their chairs to read everything on the board.

Internal bleeding in head, convulsions, loss of consciousness, delusions, temperature drop, paralysis.

"Temperature drop?" Cameron asked, curious.

"Ding ding ding. We have a winner!" House gave Cameron a mock applause."Her temperature has been dropping rapidly the past two hours. Every now and then it spikes up to feverish levels, then drops back down further than before."

"That doesn't make any sense," Chase said.

"Not only is he in love, but he's observant, too," House said, limping over to the coffee counter. "Here's an extra bit of information, which, of course, Chase should already know. Triszika was shot in the head ten years ago. Grazed, more like. However, she's saying that this has nothing to do with anything. I say, X-Ray her head, CT scan, MRI. It's all good. Now, off to work with you. Go set these things up." House leaned up against the counter as all his workers went off to work on the patient. Chase, the last one out of the room, paused quickly before stepping out the door. "Oh, Chase. I have a special job for you," House said, tauntingly. Chase turned to him, defeated. "I need you to do something for me..."

"What?"

"You need to figure out everything you can about everything that girl has done for the past ten years."

"Since she got shot?" House nodded and slapped Chase on the back with sarcastic enthusiasm.

"How smart you are. You should be a doctor or something." He stepped out of the door in front of Chase, who stood in the room, taking a deep breath before going to the patient's room. He knocked on the door before entering, and when he opened it, Nasili looked up at him with her dark eyes. They were rimmed in red. A young man, who was sitting by her bedside, stood up to go over to Chase.

"Doctor Gregory House?" he asked, with a slight Czech accent. Chase shook his head.

"I'm Doctor Chase, House is my boss. I'm just here to get some information out of Miss Triszika." Then he noticed the man for the first time, despite the fact that he was talking directly to him. He had been staring at Triszika. She looked the same as usual - calm, composed, deadly gorgeous. There was an air of panic about her, but it seemed to not affect her appearance at all.

"I'm her brother, Markus. I live in New York. When I heard about what happened... I had to come." Chase nodded, understanding he brother's panic. Markus looked lovingly at his sister, and she murmured something to him in Czech. Chase averted his eyes from hers. Even when she was addressing her brother, she was looking tantalizingly into his eyes, as if she was trying to say something.

"My sister wants me to leave, so that you may talk with her. I am afraid she knows about as much English as any Czech girl who took it in school does, but if you need anything... a translator, just... anything, please call me out." He said something to Nasili in Czech and went to her side, squeezing her hand and kissing her on the forehead. Then he took his time getting out of the room. As the door closed, Chase went over to the chair Markus had been sitting in.

"Your brother is very sweet," he said, not sure whether or not she could understand. She scoffed.

"Hardly. He thinks I'm some tiny little child, that I could break at any moment. He doesn't even know that I can speak English better than most Englishmen."

"Well, unfortunately, you're in America. Completely different language," Chase said, simpering kindly before taking a seat in the plastic chair. She smiled back.

"You're not from here," she said plainly.

"Australia," he said quietly while looking over a clipboard that was on her bedside table. "I imagine it must be pretty hard to be in the spotlight 24/7 when you're a couple thousand miles away from home," he said to her, trying to get to the task at hand.

"I don't mind. Well, I do mind the kind of attention, but I don't mind that its there, really."

"Well, I've been sent to try and figure some things out. Could you tell me about your family medical history?"

"My mother died in a train accident when I was four. I never met my father until I was 18 and working for the government. Even then, he didn't know I was his. He left my mother when I was three months old. My brother remembers him much better than I. I haven't talked to him in two years. I don't believe he has any medical problems."

"What about Markus?"

"Markus was diagnosed with lung cancer last year. He smoked maybe three packs a day when he first moved to New York. Since then he's been trying to cut down, but it finally caught up with him." She seemed to go very quiet, and deep within her thoughts. It was so strange for Chase to hear her speak. She had this angellically eerie voice, with a thick accent that made her words flow off her tongue like butter. Her eyes were compelling and deep, like a thousand vast oceans pile on top of each other, and the colour of the night sky.

"When you were sixteen, you were shot, is that right?" This made her perk up.

"Yes. I was. In the head. Grazed. Painful, but not that much damage. I have a huge scar, though. And some bone damage. Other than that, nothing important about it. It bled a lot. The doctors said more than it was supposed to." Chase continued to flip through the clipboard that held her file. He saw something and then paused, eyes wide. She sighed, as if she knew exactly what was going through his head at this moment. "And a sanguarian since birth. Try telling a traditional Czech mother that her newborn daughter is practically a vampire and she'll die, I swear to god."

"Wouldn't that have affected the..."

"It did. Thus the bleeding."

"Ah." Chase didn't really know what else to ask about, as he was kind of in shock. He was surprised House hadn't mentioned it. However, he knew that Cameron and Foreman would need a bit of help with all the tests, and there would probably be nurses soon to take Nasili to the tests. "Well, that's all I need for now. Remember, I'm Doctor Chase, and if you ever need anything, you can ask for me."

"Or I could just say I need the handsom blonde Australian doctor, and I'd get you."

"But Doctor Chase is so much easier to say," he said before getting up and leaving.

* * *

Just a reminder, I know next to nothing about medical stuff. So please don't review me from this point on about how "THIS DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!" or "THAT ISN'T REAL!" or any of that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hero of the Story**

"So what you're saying is that she'll die anyway, even if we figure out what's happening to her and cure her?" Chase said in disbelief.

"Well, its highly probable. People just don't like her - the jury just doesn't like her. I mean, she's clearly fallen into something she'll never get out of." Chase just sat down in his seat. He was sick of debating. He hadn't visited either Nasili or seen Markus in the day and a half since his first quest. He knew what would happen. She would pull a sympathy card, he would fall for it. She was dying either way - he was sure of it.

"I take it you still haven't figured out what's wrong with our beautiful killer?" House asked, limping into the room.

"Isn't that your job?" Cameron asked as she came in behind him. "Her vitals are looking better, but her temperature's still dropping. What would cause this? There's nothing showing up on any of these tests - no tumors, no blood clots, nothing. Its like, her brain is willing for the rest of her body to shut down completely." She plopped down next to Chase, throwing her files onto the table, defeated.

"Well, her brother's dying too. Just... more slowly. Lung cancer."

"And why didn't we know this before?" House asked, popping a vicodin into his mouth.

"Anonymous clinic, according to him. But..."

"If you keep doing that trailing off thing, people will definitely continue to understand you," House said, limping over to the board and looking over his scrawled list of symptoms.

"Well, he smoked up to three packs a day when he first moved to New York. Nasili must've gotten quite a bit of secondhand smoke when they lived together," Chase said hopefully, even though he knew that it wouldn't help much since there was no trace of cancer apparent on any of the tests.

"Well, she's a vampire, I'm sure a bit of smoke wouldn't affect her."

"That's unfair! And ethnist..." Cameron shouted. When she got a look at strange look at her made-up word, she was fairly quick on the recovery. "I mean, it's not really fair to categorize people of that region of Europe as vampiric. It's stereotypical and mean..."

"But she is a vampire. Oh, didn't Chase tell you?" House turned slightly to Chase. "The poor girl's a sanguarian." This was met by silence.

"Couldn't that have anything to do with her temperature?" Cameron asked.

"First of all, her iron levels are fine. Secondly, if she were having troubles with her iron levels, we would know. And lastly, it would change her temperature to hightened levels rather than lowered."

"Why hasn't the temperature drop affected her heart?" Foreman piped in suddenly. Everyone else turned to face him - House pivoted on his cane, Cameron turned on her feet delicately, and Chase swilved his chair around.

"The fifty-thousand dollar question. Why don't you go check her heart?" House said, sending Foreman off. He sighed and went to go do some tests on the patient. "Now, as for you two, I need you to find out everything you can about sanguarianism, vampire lore, anything. Let's see if this girl is suffering from bloodlust." He turned and walked out of the room, leaving Chase and Cameron alone to stare their feet.

"Guess we should get going," Chase said blankly, and the two made their way to the door at the same time, which proved to be not the best planning when they tried to get out of the room. "Sorry," he muttered, and she pushed her way out the door, sighing heavily. Chase rolled his eyes. For some unknown reason, it seemed to be that Miss Allison Cameron was jealous of Nasili Triszika.

"I'm going to go to the public library. You... you can go ahead and look through all the medical texts we have here," she said forcefully, walking down the hall in a slight huff.

"What the hell did I do?" Chase mused to himself before going off to search through meaningless medical dictionaries.

Foreman, however, was not exactly thrilled to have to come to this patient alone, face to face. She knew, like she could smell it, that he didn't want to help her, that he didn't believe her innocence. The moment he stepped into the room, he knew he would be greeted with cold stares and mutterings in a language he didn't particularly care to understand. All he wanted was to do his job and get out of there ASAP. This time, however, he was not greeted with any hostility at all, but an empty bed. He dropped his clipboard and searched frantically around the room for anyt sign of her. "Nurse!" he called out, hoping he wouldn't get the edge of the blade from Cuddy for loosing a patient. "Where the hell is Triszika?" he yelled at the nearest nurse. She shook her head. "Has anyone seen the patient in room 211? Has anyone seen her?" he called out into the hallway.

* * *

I am aware of the amazing shortness of the chapter and the amazingly long wait... I apologize. However, I will try my damnedest to get a few more chapters up this week. 


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